Description of the Unit

This unit teaches students skills associated with interviews designed to elicit information used in persuasive opportunities.  Although sales interviews constitute a common example of this type of interview, persuasive interviews can also take place in college/career recruiting encounters, charitable contribution solicitations, and arbitration/negotiation meetings.  This unit teaches students to:

1) apply ethical and theoretical principles associated with persuasion
2) research a topic, purpose, situation, and interviewee
3) structure an interview following the principles outlined by Monroe's Motivated Sequence
4) critically analyze persuasive attempts when they are the interviewee.

Relevant Chapter

Chapter 7: The Persuasive Interview

Potential Activities

• Students will select and research a product line (e.g., different types of Sport Utility Vehicles, different Internet Service Providers, different banking options for a particular bank or different options provided by multiple banks, etc.).  After researching and becoming familiar with the product line, the student should prepare a persuasive interview and conduct that interview with an interview partner.  After soliciting answers to the interview questions, the student should make a recommendation to their interview partner about a product/service they would recommend based on the answers.

• Analyze persuasive interviewees conducted by professionals from the community.  The students can either "shadow" a professional or participate in situations where they are "interviewed" in a persuasive situation (e.g., visit a car dealer or store, investigate services offered by a bank, etc.).  In their analysis they should summarize the interview and situation and then analyze the strategies used by the interviewer.

• Interview community professionals who use persuasive interviews in their job.  The interview should elicit "real world" information about strategies employed in a variety of persuasive interview situations.  Although students can write a report of their interview, oral reports are also useful so that the entire class can learn from each students' findings.

• Have students engage in short, two person,  cross-examination debates over topics selected by the instructor.  The debate format would allow for each person to present a short constructive speech, followed by a cross examination from the other person.  Following the two constructives and cross examinations, both students would present a rebuttal using information from the cross examinations to bolster their position. 

• Have students critically evaluate persuasive appeals found in the popular press.  Although these appeals typically do not take the form of an interview, this assignment is useful for teaching students to critically evaluate persuasive attempts.  The analysis should summarize persuasive strategies used in the appeal and evaluate the effectiveness of those strategies based on the audience and context (e.g., the magazine the advertisement was in, the television time slot, the show it accompanied, etc.).

Daily Lesson Plans